Pushing the River

In Barbara Monier’s third novel, a family crisis erupts when a fifteen-year-old becomes pregnant and decides to keep the baby.

Madeline describes her house as an empty shell inhabited by ghosts. She has been living alone for years, keeping to a few rooms, surrounded by the possessions of her ex-husband and grown children. Over the course of four months, people accumulate in the household one by one—including Madeline’s new love interest, who unexpectedly shows up carrying grocery bags full of his clothes.

Pushing the River is told largely through Madeline’s eyes. As we discover how she came to “push the river”, the unfolding action is interspersed with Madeline’s memories of her own mother, driving a message of sometimes-anarchic confusion, occasional angst, and powerfully abiding love across the generations of a familiar American family.

SRP: $15.95

Page Count: 248

Publication Date: 9 October 2018

ISBN-10: 1937484653

ISBN-13: 978-1937484651

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About the Author

Barbara Monier has been writing since her earliest days when she composed in crayon on paper with extremely wide lines. She studied writing at Yale University and the University of Michigan. While at Michigan, she received the Avery and Jule Hopwood Prize. It was the highest prize awarded that year and the first in Michigan’s history for a piece written directly for the screen.…

“A very powerful book about the cascading benefits and injuries of the relationships of women across generations. A great study of a character, and her efforts to hold things together amid constant chaos.” —John K. Manos, author, Dialogues of a Crime

“This is a novel about how women pass along wisdom [and] the power of mothers to embarrass. The monstrous. The methodical.” —James R. Petersen, journalist, writer, storyteller